The Collapse of Social-Democracy – w/ Jeffrey Tucker

[Music] hello everybody I brought here Jeffrey Tucker and this is a video in English because I wanted to bring Jeffrey here we had low the yellow fest protests in France and the first thing that clicked me clicked in my head when I saw them was like I remember that article from Jeffrey back in 2017 about the collapse of social democracy because right now we’re seeing like the end of a bubble in the stock market we’re seeing the US isn’t shut down like there there is a financial problem but you know taking a step backwards are we seeing like the end of a system here is like are we 98 1989 with communism is this what’s going on so I just thought we need Jeff retired yeah yeah it’s good to be here and I’m glad you’re asking these questions because I want to write about this all the time but it’s actually a difficult thing to understand because because we live in social democracy and we have like the the the last hundred years right and people don’t understand that and it’s been going on for a hundred years we’ve we’ve developed this kind of total system of intellectual state management like we put bureaucrats in charge and they determine our wages they take taxes out of our paycheck they demand is the whole of life where we can live what we can do and so on so on this is a brand new system it’s not quite socialism but it borrows from socialism but it’s within a democratic context but it it imagines that intellectuals can run the world essentially you know and and I’ve always wondered ever since it like 1989 how long the system could last because actually everything they’ve done has failed the Social Security system has failed the public school system has failed the income taxes that they steal from us are all completely wasted their regulatory systems are at best redundant superfluous but actually destructive their business regulations have only created you know sort of more and more cartels central banking has failed to do what it was supposed to do stabilize the economy eliminate inflation and so on so on so across the board this whole paradigm is scientific social management social democracy in welfare states right I’d like spread the wealth as far as possible it’s none of it has actually achieved what they would all the architects of the system has hoped it would achieve but after 1989 there was a profound sense in the air that only totalitarianism had had had collapsed but not sort of democratic totalitarianism I just if you kind of water it down it could work the problems communism it’s not the spirit yeah yeah that’s right so it was like because the Soviets weren’t elected by the people somehow you know everybody got upset about it but it wasn’t like the system of collectivism that had failed but I wonder have wondered ever since 1989 because I mean we saw the way a system completely collapses like just in six or eight months suddenly that everything just unraveled and people thought it would last forever like for sure you had you had economists in the 80s you know saying like yeah you know communism can work you know they have 50% of the GDP of the US they could overtake us it was like it was taken seriously and then people who realize like oh it’s kind of like figuring out a magic trick and then you look at it again you kind of go like yeah how did he it was a really bad idea socialism and so it could not last because it failed to achieve its aims you know eventually people get wise and they figure it out like Thomas Kuhn talks about this and as paradigms of science you know when when one paradigm stops explaining the world and there’s too many anomalies eventually humanity just rejects that system so the question about in my mind ever since 1989 is when is this going to happen to social democracy because it’s just as much a failure it’s just not so conspicuous but now all these years later like 30 years later whatever we’re trying to steep the system eat itself like it’s got goals that are incompatible you know on one hand people don’t want to be taxed on the other hand they do want clean air something like that and so they they clashed together with each other and even in France people finally said look this is this is very bad we’re being pillaged by an elite I need to live my lives why are you stealing my money and a lot of the protesters are not like right-wingers or free market people they’re just people don’t who don’t want to have their money stolen from them so I got and I think it was the it was the people who just fell for the social democracy you know trap we’re like well the state was supposed to provide me pensions and health and education and all this and it is failing and I am massively pissed off for reasons I am not aware of and I will torch stuff until somebody figures it out that’s right and and and so now they’re now in France or they’re terrified they’re like wait a minute the most important thing is that we enact the central plan but they’re gonna burn down our cities if we do it so there’s a kind of a panic in the air but I think ultimately Raphael people do not understand why social democracy has failed and there’s many many reasons like the state feels that everything it does it never achieves these aims but there’s certain features of social social democracy as an ideology that are fundamentally incompatible and the one I would isolate that’s that’s most I guess you’d say prescient is that social democracy celebrates diversity on one hand and the welfare state on the other and those are not compatible people’s sense of what’s possible and it goes like this so the welfare state is based on a family model of social organization like nobody likes to have as money stolen but if you’re going to be taxed you might put up with it longer if you know that your money is going to assist people who are kind of like you because you might but for the grace of God be them so you have to have like some kind of emotional connection to the people who are on the receiving end of the welfare and then you’re you’re willing to put up with it and buy emotional I mean maybe maybe it’s religious maybe it’s Geographic you know maybe it’s a language maybe it’s ethnicity at least in the American texts people tend to think like this maybe it’s like a connection to the founders of the nation or something like that you have to have some relationship with it or systems or some sense of a debt you know like those people suffered I’m rich because they suffered so it’s kind of okay because yeah yeah the other way that’s right you could be guilt like feel guilty first the bad things you’ve your people have done to them or something like this but you have to have some rationale but if it’s just like complete strangers who you’re convinced are not really deserving and you could never be like them then it becomes a problem like like and I’m not just making this up all right there’s a tremendous amount of research about this the welfare state is predicated on the idea of a certain kind of level of homogeneity within the recipient and the giving population like they have to kind of be the same people more or less and if they’re not then people really begin to protest and it falls apart so it’s actually one of the great contradictions of social democracy in one hand there’s this celebration of diversity oh we’re so different we have to love everyone despite you know even though you hate them you after you’re supposed to love them astray bad that you hate them and so on so there’s always being lectured to about the diversity and tolerance on the other hand they erected welfare states where people will not put up with having their money stolen for for to support people who they have nothing in common with whatsoever so it’s like a fundamental tension and social scientists have known this for like 30 years now like there’s a kind of a major discovery that’s that happened in the academic literature you can look it up and see there have been like global population studies about the relationship between the welfare state and diversity and shown that it’s not stable like people get really fed up but it gets too generous and and they get taxed too much they protest and they push back and so this has been going on for decades like quietly but hardly anybody talks about you never read about it in the press but the serious academics know very well that this is true so social democracy needs to choose between these two values between the welfare state and diversity and they don’t want to because both of them are really important to the social democratic ideology but they’re coming in to clash with each other right now and if you look out over the the last 30 years of explicitly social democratic parties they keep losing a little bit every single year it’s been going on for again like decades in Europe and the United States and Latin America this social democratic ideology of wealth redistribution and ruled by experts under the pretense of democratic approval is getting less and less and less and less popular has been replaced by other things sometimes things even more left-wing and sometimes a lot of times more recently by things that are much more right-wing and sometimes there’s you know the merchant class is pushing for liberalism free-market liberalism which you and I favor but we’re not yet there but the thing is that this old-fashioned paradigm that became very like popular in the 1930s is on its way out because it’s completely failed it’s got too many internal contradictions and and voters are pushing back against it I think you’ve seen this in the most recent election and Brazil and we’ve seen this in the United States too and Europe is going through this right now so so it’s kind of hard to see like you have to get a little bit above the system to observe it but but if you look out over the last thirty years and especially the last like five years you can start to see this gradual collapse of this quasi socialist democratically approved system of elite management of society and micromanagement it’s it’s like just systematically falling apart and the great question I think for for for liberalism for anarchism for libertarianism is you know can we make the case to replace this and we haven’t yet it’s not popular enough but that’s okay I think we first need to like consolidate the gains and and utterly smash the system of social organization and managerial social democratic governance that that’s emerged since the 1930s and then and then and then we can work to see what replaces it yes sorry you ever seen go ahead now but you touched on a lot of questions that I had that I wanted to kind of go for stew because it’s the question of so what now because people have this difficulty of understanding like why did social democracy fail and one of the reasons I wanted to bring you it’s because here in Brazil people think like now like the constitution of 1988 which was sadly made one year before the communist regime fell if it was if you were made in like 91 it would be completely different but people think like it’s a social democracy Constitution gives us health it does this education and it doesn’t work because politicians are corrupt and so right this wasn’t one of the driving forces in the elections this year whoa so not oh he’s not corrupt like you can say everything I want about him but he’s not corrupt so he’s gonna make it work right right and you have to tell people like even if you had like the most well-meaning honest people it still wouldn’t work and you can point to the countries like Denmark like Denmark had ten years of no GDP growth right like they just wind open nominally Japan Japan’s going sideways for like what 30 years now or something like that yeah you can say like it’s corruption and in it really helps to get Brazilians to see no this is happening in Europe this is happening in the u.s. this help it happening in Japan like this this idea doesn’t work but people don’t see it they don’t see it that you can’t you can have a smart enough person to rule other people’s life you can have someone that is smart enough to run healthcare for a nation that doesn’t work like it’s enough of a problem to run a hospital just guess just ask anyone that’s enough of a headache for your even even a small bakery she’s trying to run that try to run like a bakery you’re gonna feel like that’s kind of hard okay now imagine you run the Ministry of bakeries dude it’s not gonna work like there is no now’s not sufficient intelligence in one person to do that like and you need that that’s Hayek’s problem like you need people exchanging information through the price system and you when you take out the price system it doesn’t work like that’s the fundamental problem but people have a difficulty seeing that because they’re like no no but but we were we were promised that this was work would work like it’s in the execution so the other thing that is a big problem and I completely agree with everything just said like intellectually it cannot work you cannot manage other people outside of their own affairs I mean it just doesn’t work there’s nothing in the world that’s that’s inclined to accept you know you can use violence but even that doesn’t actually work but you cannot be smart enough to manage anything all intelligence to society is like embodied in the people and the actors and the players and the property owners and the entrepreneurs and that’s where I remember your story about it yet you figure this out in San Paulo that you saw like the couple in this restaurant they cannot fully Express what they feel for each other so they cannot exchange this information so if they can’t do that how the hell can somebody think someone think that they can manage like how to educate everybody’s children oh like how is that going to work or where that building should be it should it be this tall how should its doors me made you know how much electricity will they use in a year what that guy who works there you know what kind of job should he accept where he’s not exploited and so on and so on I mean people have to make decisions for themselves you cannot be outside the system it makes it makes decisions for the boom what’s interesting to me is I think what’s what we’re going to eventually discover but it’s going to take us like another five years or something like this is that there’s no such thing as good government Rick we’re kind of figuring this out yeah like people think they have this ideal on their mind that’s has no evidence for it in all of history anywhere in the world that there can be a government that is not corrupt like just a pure public servants looking out after everybody and they’re not on the take they’re not giving jobs to their friends you know they’re not lying you know I like that has never existed ever in the history of the world but we keep thinking it’s some sort of ideal we’re going to create but it will never ever happen we have to completely give up the idea of good government I mean all government is corrupt government I mean it doesn’t matter how many people you put in at the top there will always be corruption and I think that sorry I think that the world world leaders says we are doing a fine job it’s at showing that because that’s one of the good things about Trump is like the complete disgrace Monteux seat of the President I kind of agree actually I kind of like you’re showing people that the president that the chair of the president is not some holy institution is like it’s a moral I and then you have Junko and Claude Yunker saying that when things get serious you have to lie and you go like this guy pretty much runs Europe and he’s saying because Brazilians have this idea that I bruh corruption exists in Latin America and Africa but in Europe people are honest and there is no corruption people like and they could like and you got Junko you he runs Europe and he’s in he’s saying yeah I kind of have to lie to you and you seem like that’s not gonna work you know at least they’re doing a good job of showing people that you’re you’re gonna have to start up thinking something else to solve your problems cuz this it’s not like Brazil they had a good job at this you know Dilma Rousseff was very good at this and showing people how government cannot possibly manage the post office much less anything else but this is happening in a world level so you kind of can’t hope people will kind of absorb it in some way yeah you know what’s funny about this is like I mean I agree with the left-wing criticism of the right and the right wing criticism of the left I think the Rotarians about each other but but sometimes it gets like over the top so like after the Brazilian election in the United States and I’m not sure how much you’re aware of this but this guy Boston out of one right and and Americans are extremely stupid about any political system outside of themselves like the only the only thing Americans were worried about is whether Hitler is taking over some other country only the only thing like is it wait is Hitler is he Hitler or he’s not okay that I’m sure it’s fine wait is he Hitler although that is very it’s very bad and we have to like write articles and we have to like send a tweet you know so this happened after the Brazilian election right so I’m not I don’t know enough about Boston a no but I I think that probably the reason he won was that he’s not part of the establishment see there’s what I mean but like I’m going to have to turn this on hold on okay so this guy wins because he’s not part of the establishment or something like this may not be like every politician that has ever existed is corrupt in that there are those orange guys and they wanted the Communists of the United Nations to run Brazil and surrender that to the United States so he had both so narrow and he’s not corrupt to like them like that’s the elevator pitch let’s go home with them so Americans is so funny about this because people voted for him yeah so like in the United States like the u.s. in the u.s. people don’t care about the bill that much like maybe once every 10 years then it becomes like Oh everybody’s like Oh what about Brazil Oh so after this Brazilian election suddenly in America it’s like oh no why why has Hitler taking taken charge of Brazil this is this is terrible so for about like three or maybe four eight four days people were all exercised about this and then after like four days everybody forgot about it Trump tweeted something forget about everything it’s very amusing and I’m only vaguely aware of Brazilian politics myself but I also understand that politicses can be very complicated and many many many levels you know and and complicated in the sense that sometimes you have to you you go for the guy that even if you don’t agree with many of his policies you know you’re still supporting because he’s like against the guys that you hate this happened and which was the complete stick in Brazil it was like you have the Workers Party like pretty much everybody is in jail or going to jail at some point in the future and they have this guy who is literally just a traffic cone to symbolize the guy that is work there was arrested Lula and he’s completely like the fall guy he’s completely upfront and he represents everything about corruption and you have Molinaro who is not corrupt and he has like every single flaw they should not not every single flaw segregation but he has many flaws but he is not literally the front guy for a criminal organization and the other side was saying well look you have this fascist literally Hitler guy he’s not really real Hitler okay just but yet like this guy in he literally wants to execute black people in case and even though you know we have a guy who is literally front of her a criminal organization we can’t let him you know mass murder gays so that was the whole stick of the election and both sooner one that was the problem because because because people didn’t believe it right I mean they didn’t believe this the lies right right the same thing happened in the United States because there’s go there you know right the same thing after the u.s. so everyone knows like all normal people I’m talking to you from Atlanta like people know that the media is not tell the truth that like a one-party regime has been in control of this country for 20 years they they know the law in Brazil yeah they they know that people only say things to virtue signal for political correctness but it’s not even same in Brazil and they know this guy he may be a jerk but they find them entertaining which is seeming yeah and so they’re willing to take a chance on some outsider as opposed to going along with the same terrible system that is is ruining their their lives year after year after year after year so that that’s Anna so that’s why Trump won it’s not because people want protectionism by the way that’s that’s not the thing and some of the more crazy music Trump has like people don’t actually support them but but people are fed up with with the old political monopoly and are ready to try something new you know so I same time maybe like I wrote a whole book against right-wing collectivism you know I’m against these which is amazing by the way people thank you yeah thank you so I’m really against these guys you know but I also think it’s probably the next wave of politics so that we’re gonna have to kind of get through but I also don’t think it’s going to be very successful because well it’s failing even faster than social democracy like Trump’s protectionism has been a disaster for the u.s. I mean it’s true those guys rose because in many many ways people were angry that social democracy wasn’t working that’s like you know make it work they’re not making it work I need to be more pissed off I think I don’t know like yes that’s the whole like backbone of it but people don’t see like the whole transmission mechanism from A to B and they’re like pissed off and I don’t know who to shout that I don’t know should I torch stuff right well we’re going through the list and can only wait heaps keeps running itself but it keeps changing the disguises right so so on one hand it’s like oh we’re for diversity and to grave security and we’re going to take care of you forever and provide you food safety and perfect weather and and you know uh and and safe drugs and you know and perfect money and so on so wait none of that is true so you guys are liars and you’re probably corrupt and they are definitely corrupt so here’s another guy and so then the the the the apparatus of control and compulsion changes its face this is where here’s here’s a new guy you know who’s like and and so that’s that’s kind of Trump but actually I don’t think I mean ultimately here’s the thing Raphael we live in a globalized world nobody can change that we live in a digital world nobody can change that information is right yeah yeah but information is out now and like we’re never going to Rican tain it we live in a decentralized world it but our politics are still really reactionary in really old fashioned and like real life is running I would say twenty thirty years ahead but the way our political systems are functioning and eventually they’re going to catch up to each other and and that I think is going to really consume us and our lives for the next you know 10 years is just watching this constant race but ultimately we’re headed towards whether you like it or not anarchy I mean like the system cannot be controlled it will not be controlled there will always be somebody to object to it and we can either choose a political form of social organization where we all hate each other and eat each other and announce each other or we can choose just plain-old freedom where we just choose to live our lives start our businesses keep our money travel where we want and to me that’s the system we really need and it’s called liberalism right I mean the old days they called this liberalism and and I think that’s where we’re headed I mean this was liberalism was basically invented 500 years ago and it worked for a very long time and then in the 20th century we started trying something else but it didn’t work it’s a brief parenthesis and we’re in the I think the final stages of it and the rise of these guys where there’s Trumper both narrow or whomever is like a last sort of ditch effort it’s actually it depends on the way you interpret it I see these guys as being really kind of valuable weapons against the Social Democrats they present their own dangerous at the same time and so we have to come out come at them in many ways I wrote my book I guess it came out last year but the the purpose of that book is to instruct us on what we should be thinking about in two or three years from now you know like I’m trying to think like way ahead and and right-wing collectivism isn’t going to work any better than left-wing collectivism but I don’t think that there’s any serious future just Social Democratic left-wing ideology I just I just don’t believe it I think people are fed up with it we were tired of the lies they still control the media they still control academia and they still control the government bureaucracies but apart from that they’re losing all power and all control I think it’s a in many ways beautiful and those institutions they control are losing respect like we’re losing respect for academia we’re losing every everything you quote but my final question is but what about tomorrow what about the next few years because what we’re seeing now is a great possibility of a worldwide recession you know markets tanking the Fed is OK interest rates the European Central Bank hasn’t even started yet and they’re already crackling and then so so how does this go down because my point is I’m sure at this point we’re gonna have a recession but that’s not my consideration Michael series like how are people going to react politically to it let’s take Greece so Greece went broke in this world how about we put the extreme left there that ought to work you know that was one week or we could go the the Russia way you know Russia just collapses and a whole bunch of countries just far away and countries like Estonia go like full free market that could happen or it could happen like Yugoslavia you know it just breaks down and war I don’t think we’re gonna have that because like everybody’s dubrow protect but like what’s going on as soon as this crisis hits in country’s start to go broke you know like Italy goes broke France goes broke right us you know you’re in a shutdown right now but so there’s like you have some problem like that I don’t know I don’t think the u.s. is gonna go broke in this recession well but every recession is coming for sure yeah but you know deficits gola to like two trillion like starts to not work right so like would people do like this so so the most important thing we can do right now and I’m believing I’m dedicated to this every single day is to correctly name the problem like we have to name the problem and we have to do it in every conceivable way and every venue we possibly can we can’t stop doing this every single day every single hour name the problem and the problem is the state and its activities and that’s what’s driving the recession and unless we get hold of this narrative I mean I’ve been doing this every day for the last several months right like I find another place to write that Trump’s protectionism has failed and I find a different way to say it I found another venue to say it and just keep saying it over and over and over again large deficits don’t work the welfare state has failed this protectionism government management of society is is is driving us into recession we’d have to keep saying it in order to make this point of view part of the conversation if we fail to say this then we will then this point of view will not be part of the conversation but if we do keep saying it then we will become part of the conversation I think this is the most important thing because the left will try to blame all of our upcoming troubles on like bowl senado and yeah we tried capitalism and we elected Trump he cut tax in my craw macron is like a liberal he’s a free ad or it failed and yeah he tried labor regulation so yeah that’s right and and so they would and and they have a very big agenda to make this happen the only reason they’ve succeeded is because they haven’t had a competition to the beach so we have to be out there you and I are like nothing and in some ways we’re like nobody who cares but actually ideas are powerful and doesn’t matter if it’s coming from you or from here for me my friends are your friends or whatever we have to keep saying it and every consumer way and we have to say with bravery and intelligence and with evidence and with conviction and and only that way we can be part of the conversation because we cannot left we can cannot allow the left to win this narrative right now I mean there’s every reason to think that the state has completely failed and we just have to say this every single day this is the way you fight the battle of ideas and it’s exhausting but it’s also fun yeah I couldn’t think of a better way to end the company awesome to have you Jeffrey if you want to and say something just in closing yeah yeah I’ll just say yeah I mean first of all I think I’m gonna see you I think I’m coming in the spring so I’m excited about that so I yeah yeah I think so it’s been a long time you haven’t come here yeah it’s been like a year or two something like this yes and the last time you I was there we wrote on the bus and I was like asleep the whole time yeah I’m so sorry about that but I would be better this time but I mean I think I’m coming back in the spring and the meanwhile I’m working at the American Institute for Economic Research which is extremely cool and great brand Massachusetts and I’m finishing up a book that it’s going to be coming out in about six months but it’s entirely about art and music and culture yeah I know I love this it’s a beautiful book yeah I’m so exciting here so is it good good because I’m coming to do like a book tour for that book okay awesome I’m really excited about it Thank You Raphael it’s really good to see you and thanks for your wonderful work yeah thank you so much for your time two men I guess that’s it bye okay bye

100 Responses

Still one thing remains incomprehensible to me: how most people in European social-democracies seem, year after year, tolerate paying extortionate taxes for keeping this failed system "functioning". Why they don't realize that TAX IS THEFT, no matter which is the purpose of paying taxes – even in countries where public services seem to be reasonably… "sactisfactory". As an eternal anarchist, I never could understand that. Why they don't realize that other systems of public administration can work. It's that…

They start speaking things that I already read a lot in books of Mises, Hayek, Lysander, Rothbard, Bastiat and Hoppe, so I'm wondering that's because it make sense, that's not just they're knowledge in what they think libertarianism is, it is really libertarianism, none of any socialist could do that, Sartre used to speak about freedom and responsible but he was a communist that supported the Cuba regime and URSS as well, he didn't knew about the nature of the value and although of this, he did find the reason like " value is subjective and have a colligation with the exercise of the ego of anyone " – and although of that fact he gave support to the Marxism, I think that he didn't knew what was Marxism

I have noticed that Social Democracy tend to make people actually hate diversity and some other form of ideal during the prep school days. every effort they make is to get easy votes from poor people without making them have a shot at a improving their lives. while also making the life of people who is improving or want to improve a lot more difficult. which maks everyone sooner or later hate that kind of system even if they don't know how it works. it is incredible how many teachers are actually fine with this kind of rotten system that only works once you are behind the closet gates of the academy and the media

Dude, the subprime crisis in 2007 was a liberal crisis, not a social-democratic one. Be honest and take responsability for the failure of your belief. Liberals are similar to communists, both believe in utopies, and when things get wrong, both always blame something else.

Thank you for sharing knowledge to all of us. Some years ago I used to think that a Minor State should be a system that could really work but recently I've found out exactly what was said in this video. The government isn't the problem, an idea that any kind of government should exists it's the real problem. We're seeing this right here in Brazil right now cause only the idea of a communism government is frightening people.